Billy the Greek

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kolas79

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INTRODUCTION

I am a member of this forum since 2013. Up till now all you guys with your wonderful stories have been keeping me great company during these “boring hours in work” , you know when you take your serious look and stare your monitor like you read something very important!
The idea of writing a story of my own has been always in mind but to be honest I was feeling that I was not up to the challenge. The standards in this site are very high (in comparison to a Greek Manager Site where I have posted two stories).
But after finishing my last save in FM15, I regretted for not sharing it with you! It was an amazing ride which started from Greece, continued in Italy, then England, Spain, Germany and Italy again. I‘ve managed to create an unbeatable team (West Ham) demolish Bayern Munich in champions league final with 8-1, and played a tactic with three defenders for the first time in all my FM years!
This year I‘ve decided to give it a try , hoping to give you the same joyful time you gave me even if my English are a bit rusty !
So ladies and gentlemen fasten your seat belts please a new journey in the magic (and addicting) world of Football Manager begins!!
 
After the introduction, here comes the important detail. The save will start from Greece and its almost permanent champion Olympiacos Piraeus F.C. Instead of me talking about my favorite team, I will let Wikipedia to do it:

“Founded on 10 March 1925, Olympiacos are the most successful club in Greek Football History having won 42 Greek League titles, 27Greek Cups, 17 Doubles and 4 Greek Super Cups , for a total of 73 national titles, all records. Olympiacos' dominating success can be further evidenced by the fact that all the other Greek clubs have won a combined total of 37 League titles.
Olympiacos also holds the record for the most consecutive Greek League titles, as they are the only team to have won seven consecutive League titles (1997-2003), having broken their own previous record of six consecutive from the club's trophy-laden era of the 50s (1954-1959), when Olympiacos gained unequivocally the nickname of Thrylos (The Legend).

In European competitions, they have reached the quarter finals of the 1998-99 UEFA Champions League losing the semi final spot in the last minutes of their second match against Juventus and the quarter finals of the 1992-93 European Cup Winner's Cup. Olympiacos are the highest ranked Greek Team in UEFA Rankings, occupying the 21st place in Europe with 68.620 points, standing one place above A.C. Milan and one below Manchester United. They have also won the Balkans Cup in 1963, becoming the first ever Greek club to win an international, non-domestic competition. Olympiacos is one of the founding members of the Europena Club Association in 2008.

Club's home ground is the Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus. Olympiacos is the most popular Greek club with around three million fans inside Greece and millions of others in the Greek Comunities all over the world. Olympiacos was placed ninth on the 2006 list of clubs with the largest number of paying members, with 83,000 registered members as of April 2006. In 2014, that figure increased and the team boasts 98,000 registered members. They share a great and long-standing rivalry with Panathinaikos, with whom they contest the Derby of the eternal enemies.

Olympiacos supporters have been involved in the worst tragedy that ever hit Greek sports, known as the Karaiskakis stadium disaster (8 February 1981). Twenty-one supporters lost their lives in Gate 7, while rushing out of the stadium to celebrate the 6–0 victory of Olympiacos against AEk Athens.”

Team Logo
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Stadium Image
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I 'll come back with an afternoon post (since I 'm at work now) introducing you to the coach of the team, and explain you the tittle of this story. Thank you very much for the views so far ! Much appreciated!
 
Good on you mate, all the best. Will be following with interest.
 
And what about our hero? Who is going to be the coach? I have selected for this role my favorite player in all the years I've been watching Olympiacos in the field or in TV. A wonderful advanced play maker (to speak with FM’s terms). His name? Vassilis Karapialis.
Vassilis played ten years in Olympiacos (from 1991 to 2000) and managed to lift 4 Greek championship trophies, one Greek cup and one Greek Super Cup. Our favorite “Billy” (that was his nickname and this the explanation for the title of my story ) voted as the third best Greek professional footballer and he is considered to be the best Greek number 10 shirt in history of Olympiacos along with Georgios Delikaris (a star player back in the 70s who was called the Greek George Best )

View attachment 216441 View attachment 216440

And here is a video with some of Billy's skills (you will hear some Greeks but "football is a universal language " :))

[video=youtube;xu7J_PXhztk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu7J_PXhztk[/video]
 
Okay so beta mode is downloaded and let them games begin !! Wish me luck everybody !
 
It is official !
View attachment 216264

Vassilis return to his old neighborhood but now he is will directing the team outside of the field. The good news is that the fans love him. The bad news is that the fans love him because they admired his playing skills. Now being a manager for the first time, a few bad results and all the love can easily turn to hate !
Each year winning the championship in Greece is something that the fans take for granted. What they are eager about is the team to move as forward as possible to the Champions League. Will Vassilis manage it, or he will be the first to leave ? Let 's just hope that he can manage as well he can dribble his opponents ...

View attachment 216246

"Billy" in his new role !
 
As soon as "Billy" returned to his beloved team , he started working the tactic that he had in mind for the Greek Champions. It was a totally different thing, compared to what the former coach Marco Silva was planning to use. To cut a long story short, the formation was consisting of the central defenders, a defensive middle-fielder, two wingers , a ball winning middle-fielder, a central middle-fielder , an enganche and a deep lying striker. And one picture is like a thousand words ...

View attachment 216115




View attachment 216113
-"Good morning I would like to speak to the chairman"
- "But of course Mr. Karapialis he is right inside"

View attachment 216111- "The squad has potential but I still need a few twinks in order for the players to able to support the new system" said Vassilis to the chairman. "Perhaps we will have to do 2 to 3 transfers" continued...

View attachment 216110"Look Billy" said Mr Marinakis, "I will be glad to satisfy your demands. But in order to do that we are to sell some players as well in order to balance our economics. So together with your transfer targets you must also provide me with your "black list" of the current roster"

"I understand this sir I will get on to it right away" answered Billy , who already had some players in he mind who were not fitting the system and could bring some money to club...
 
Wow, thats an interesting formation. Will be interested to who you bring in as well! KIU mate.
 
Lippo255 said:
Wow, thats an interesting formation. Will be interested to who you bring in as well! KIU mate.
Click to expand...

I used it in the Fm2015 and it worked perfectly ! You need to have fast defenders though because it won't work otherwise. It is also preferable if your wingers have some defensive skills. The roster itself had only two fast defenders so as you can understand I had to make my moves. My transfer budget is not so good (for the Greek standards) is last year. Only 3 million Euros. But I think I've managed to make my movies. I 'll post an update later on (called in sickness today in work so as to play the FM ha ha ha !!!)

Thanks for watching !!!!
 
Olympiacos friendly matches showed that the team needed improvement in order to be ready not so match for the Greek Super league, but for the Champions League. Because the team may have won most of them , but the weaknesses where there and they were obvious.
View attachment 216029

During their last night in Holland (where the preparing of the team was being held), Karapialis and his assistant Joao Pedro Sousa , after they send the players to their rooms, in order to rest and wake up fresh for the early flight back to Greece ,come down to the restaurant of the hotel where the team was staying in order to discuss their transfer targets. This talk lasted so much that they ended up ordering breakfast !!!

"The results form the friendly matches were encouraging. But again who cares about the result of a friendly match? The thing was that buying one more fast defender was more than necessary. The team has good strong and tall defenders but quite slow. In addition to that a may have to bring in a new ball winning middle-fielder, since my main man Maniatis is still injured and he will lost the whole preparation season."

View attachment 216034"Hey coach wake up! You are talking to your sleep" , whispered Joao Pedro who was sitting next to Billy in the plane which was taking the team back to Athens.

"Oh my Good I felt asleep. Thanks Joao , did I said something that the players should hear ?" said Billy while he has touching his head because he gave a pretty good header to the front sit as he was suddenly awaken.

"Luckily for you all the others except me where sleeping. You were repeating our transfer planning"
"Yeah luckily in dead" Thanks for watching my back Joao"

Although all the decisions had been made , Billy did want the players that we going to leave to learn with this way. He was going to talk to each of them separately in order to explain them his thoughts. He was a player too and knew that learning that your team does not estimate you hearts like a punch in the stomach.

View attachment 216027

View attachment 216026"So Vassilis , are you happy with the transfer deals?"
View attachment 216025 "More that happy Mr. Vangelis. I believe it's going to be a great year".
 
We all get bored of the friendly matches ! We all love making transfers ! But nothing is compared to the real action ...
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View attachment 216005"We could certainly have won this game. We manage to achieve a two goal lead but we did not stayed focused until the final whistle. That should become a lesson for the next game to come. Congratulation to PAOK who manage to turn this round."

After the trip to Thessaloniki and the big game with PAOK (one of Olympiacos fierce rivals), it was time for the champions to face Asteras Tripolis and for the fans to see the new team that their favorite "Billy" in their first official game as a coach in Karaiskaki Stadium.

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View attachment 216003"I would like to thank our fans for their warm welcome. It has been a privilege to play for Olympiacos and now I am honored to return here as a coach." said Vassilis trying very hard to hide his emotion.

 
So the team managed to achieve its first win for the championship but the most important news was the upcoming , and they were both bad ...

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and then ...

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So a tough group and my basic striker out for two months how joyful !!!

And since these two bad news were feeling lonely a third come in to join them. Olympiacos traveled to Veroia for the third game of Super League. It was supposed to be an easy game just before the opening match against Chelsea for the Champions League. But...

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"Not the result we wanted. Once again we manage to loose a game that we had in our hands.We will have to deal with it because it is a shame to just throw a 80 minute effort in the garbage" said Billy and left troubled from the press room hall.

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All these were before the game. Afterwards ...

View attachment 215968 Chelsea kicked our **** big time...

"We just did not have what it takes today. There were by far the better and they proved it. If you are unable to attack you just won't win. Is that simple" said Karapialis.

And not only did we lost the game but ...
View attachment 215966

That 's all for today my friends. Hope you like it so far !

 
After the disappointing appearance against Chelsea , Olympiacos (and his coach) needed a win in order to gain confidence. The Match against Panionios was the perfect opportunity for that.
.View attachment 215558

"We were very very lucky today boys. You have to understand that no one is gonna let you win just because you are the last year champion. It is time to shape up and start playing according to your potentials". Karapialis kept the team in the locker rooms for about an hour after the match. Witnesses said that you could hear him shooting even if you were outside of the stadium.

Next match was for the opening of the Greek Cup. Its first phase is being held in groups of four teams and after that come the double matches. Despite the fact that the opponent was form the second division of Greek Football (it is called Football League), Olympiacos did not manage to dazzle with the result.
View attachment 215554

A few just before the second match for the Champions League , Thrylos had to travel up to Komotini (near the borders with Turkey) in order to face the local team, Panthrakikos for the championship. Once again the team had a serious injury days before an important European match.

View attachment 215553

Despite the fact that Siovas injury affected the players, they manage to grab the win with an amazing long range shoot from Cambiasso even though Zivkovic managed to get expelled early in the first half. Luckily for Olympiacos so did Papageorgiou for Panthrakikos in the 17th minute.
View attachment 215551

"A huge win for our psychology" said Karapialis after the match.

With two of our best defenders out , our main striker out and the average form of the team, the game against Wolfsburg was going to be very very tough...
View attachment 215543 (sorry for the screenshot forgot to save it. This was from the match overview.)


So my system so far is not working. Not only the team cannot perform in the Champions League (the truth is that we faced greater teams) but struggles against easier teams in Greece. Even though I am not loosing confidence. I am certain we can do better but to be honest I am still trying to find which role suits better to each player. I am open to any suggestions from you guys. Till my next update I wish you a great Saturday night!!
 
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